Meltdowns now weekly affairs for baffling Aggies

ARLINGTON – Texas A&M, in as baffling a day of the four-year Mike Sherman era as imaginable, managed to top the previous week’s meltdown on Saturday. By blowing an even bigger lead.

Arkansas overcame an 18-point halftime deficit to defeat the Aggies 42-38 before 69,838 fans in Cowboys Stadium. The Razorbacks defeated the Aggies for the third consecutive year in the Southwest Classic.

“We’ll have some heart to hearts this week, particularly on Monday, about which direction we’re going to go, and make sure what happened today doesn’t happen again,” a troubled Sherman said – in echoing his sentiments from the previous week.

Then, the Aggies blew a 17-point halftime lead against Oklahoma State before falling 30-29 at Kyle Field.
“We came out in the first half with a lot of fire, and came out in the second half talking about how we were going to come out with a lot of fire again,” receiver Jeff Fuller said Saturday. “It just didn’t happen.”

Added quarterback Ryan Tannehill: “We knew what we did last weekend, and we didn’t want to let that happen again.”

It did – thanks especially to a record-setting day by Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson and Razorbacks receiver Jarius Wright. Wilson threw for 510 yards, in snapping the single game school record of 409 set by Ryan Mallett last season. It also marked the fifth highest mark in Southeastern Conference history.

Meanwhile Wright collected a school record 281 receiving yards, second most in SEC history. Wright said A&M continually left the middle of the field free for roaming.

“That’s something we had seen before the game,” Wright said. “We’d seen a lot of film and noticed that they left the middle open. They did it against us, and we made them pay.”

A&M running back Christine Michael ran for a personal-best 230 yards on 32 carries, but that and the Aggies’ 628 yards of offense were all for naught in another loss to Arkansas. A&M has lost its last seven games against SEC opponents, including five by Sherman (three vs. Arkansas, and one each to Georgia and LSU in the Independence and Cotton bowls, respectively). The Aggies are joining the SEC in 2012.

“We’re in the Big 12 right now,” a frustrated Sherman said Saturday when asked about the Aggies’ lack of success against the SEC. “We’ll worry about (the SEC) next season.”

A&M (2-2) will try and avoid its first 2-3 start since 2008 in one week at Texas Tech.